What, Why & How do we Know ?
Been back through every post since Sept 2001 and fixed post headers with links (except 2003). Still quite a few broken internal psybertron links, but can fix. Now able to implement a Categories scheme, and a page to explain, and I must put in a dummy index page to trap and divert the old Psybertron home page links.
The database admin searching of WordPress makes this stuff so simple, if a little tedious.
Getting there.
Just started Douglas Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach – An Eternal Golden Braid” – A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll. So far, I’m reading his 1999 Preface to the 20th Anniversary Edition of his 1979 original Pullitzer prize winner.
It’s a book about life, mind, and the evolving psychology of “I” in self-referential loops, crossing multi-level patterns in systems of sufficient complexity. His preface is mainly frustration that despite his earlier prize-winning success, few people writing about his book seem to have got the message amongst all his artistic and musical metaphors.
His bio leading up to the book is intriguing and reminiscent of many others, Pirsig for one, and perhaps myself too in a small way at least, so I’m already sympathetic to the message.
After being struck by the self-referential beauty of Godel’s theorem in refuting Russell and Whitehead’s “Principia Mathematica” – he set out thinking mathematical / formal logic was the subject that excited him, but dropped out of Maths in Berkeley after just one year of “dead” logic.
Doing Physics from 1967 onwards at Eugene Oregon, he was just off Pirsig’s ZMM Oregon trail in July 1968. But, it was 1972 before Hofstadter set off on his own trek across Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alberta, pitching his tent in forests beside lakes and the like. In his case rolling not on a Honda, but cruisin’ in a ’56 Mercury – cue refrain “My baby crazy ’bout a Mercury …” (K C Douglas, 1949) Understanding the Godelian matters ever more clearly. After then going back south he continued East and he too ended up the Big Apple’s Manhattan, albeit 20 years after Kerouac, but beating Pirsig by two years, taking in Zen and “voguish” anti-scientific, hippie-irrationality (wot, no drugs Douglas?) with Molecular Biology, not to mention Escher and his Illusory Loops and Bach and his Fugues along the way. He eventually returned to Oregon to complete graduate studies, but by the time he settled on his PhD and was moving towards AI, he had already seen the subject matter shift from mathematics and logic, to philosophy and linguistics.
That same fine line between rejecting exclusively objective logic, without being branded anti-scientific. Will we find some link between the logical paradoxes of self referential loops and the blurring of objectivity with … something else. That self-referential problem and the bootstrapping of metaphysics must be the same issue at core.
ALso love the story of creating his own printed book for publication, using traditional techniques, only to have his efforts hit the buffers at the finishing line. Very reminiscent of T E Lawrence.
Time to stop speculating, and read on.
Well if UEFA’s Lennart Johanson can admit “we had made a mistake so we changed our minds and fixed it, without embarassment”, then there’s hope for all of us.
Reached half-way, the start of Volume 2. The archaic prose style, Cervantes translated by Smollett, and the Don’s already pompous delivery, means you have to work hard for its pleasures other than the sound of language itself. The theme of women as objects of admiration, and pretty well all motives, is very strong ? I must have missed the significance of why the goatherd at the end of Volume 1 is Anselmo – need to back track.
If I’m going to complete this I may have to switch to a more modern translation, to save reading time.
Founded in 1998, floated less than a year ago, Google is the biggest media company at $80bn [via BBC]
Blogged on this phenomenon a while ago – walking octopus – and here is a report on the concept being considered for robotic locomotion. [via BBC] It’ll never fly.
Chinese control over web sites may extend to requiring registration of blogs [via BBC].
{Just a place holder for some links.] I blogged on this earlier, in connection with Leonid’s links to Stafford Beer, but I see “Requisite Variety” was originally coined by W. Ross Ashby. This Google cross-hit on my site is full of interesting links, crossing my tracks all over the place – Principia Cybernetica / Heylighen, zillions of Cybernetics links generally and a few Zen sites too. Must read a few of these.
It really is amazing how Sir Bob can whip up the media and entertainment industry into action, and how that spurs those with political power into being seen to do something. And it’s great to see Live8 put it’s weight behind Make Poverty History, rather than become a separate campaign. It would have been a great pity if Live8 had just been another fundraisingathon for charity handouts, as my world-wise 19 year old pointed out the day the event was first announced.
Actually, one interesting point has been the reaction to the megalomaniac call for a million to march on Edinburgh. The Lothian chief constable couldn’t miss a justification to get his budget increased. Walking to Edinburgh from where ? Hyde Park, London, the Channel Ports ? How far ? How many ? Get real Bob, but I wonder. If anyone could make it happen.
Never hopeful about international committees meeting to agree anything. But if the leaders at the alternative summit at the Scottish Parliament could work out some practical mechanism to turn the declarations of commitment (and funding) into reality, then never mind Sir Bob, scrap the conclave, we have our next Pope.
Seriously though, I hope the outcome is not simply waiving third-world debt – something more subtle needed to reward those who attempt to improve their lot, national governments or any other constituencies. The problem would be to have a transparent allocation of funding (or debt waivers) to avoid any kind of corruption, cynical or well intentioned.
I know, just give Bob the money, (everything the fundraisers raise, everything governments pledge, in money and debt relief), oh, and a camera crew ….
There’s your reality TV for the next decade. A panel of celebrity judges, third-world banana-republic leaders (official or rebel) invited in to make their case for a handout for their pet project, the judges mock, the public votes, and next month we send Alan Titchmarsh and his mob round to check how your looking after our money. The spin-off shows rake in the advertising income (with a contribution to the shows coffers). Seriously, it’s a winner, surely ?
Update … this BBC Story contains plenty of figures, countries and issues around African debt relief, and proposed “deals” based on policies moving forward … I still say the Reality TV / I’ll take a Billion Bob / game show approach is the only way to organise the transparancy of how the benefit is deployed.
Actually, on the same Wired page as “Narcipost” is “Open Loop” – The incomplete tasks and projects in your life that constantly cycle through your head, leading to anxiety, stress, and creative constipation. Popularized by David Allen’s work-flow management book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.
I needed to know that. Back to the “rocket science” of time management.
(Now that is a post to self. I’ll consider myself told Chris.)
[Funny thing is, last time I made a reference to simple time management rules not being rocket science – it was a reference to David Allen’s book too. Oh well another on the reading list pile.]